Students Build Cozy Vacation Cabins

Not long ago, a team of architecture students from the Colorado Building Workshop built 14 cozy small cabins in Leadville, Colorado. The cabins were prefabricated, and will serve as dormitories of the Colorado Outward Bound School. The cabins are called Colorado Outward Bound Micro Cabins and were built on a rather steep hill in the Lodgepole Pine forest.

In order to shorten the amount of on-site construction time needed, the cabins were prefabricated in Denver and then shipped to the build site, where they were assembled in just three weeks.

The cabins are quite simple. Each of them rests on top of concrete piles, while they are designed in a way that offers an outdoor/indoor area which can be used for storing sports gear like kayaks, bikes and so on. The frame of the home also has a secondary roof, which is reinforced so as to be able to withstand heavy winter snow loads, which are common in the area. The exterior cladding of the cabins is hot-rolled steel and this material was used because it needs very little maintenance.

The cabins measure from 140 to 200 sq ft (13 to 18 sq m). The interior is clad in birch plywood. The actual layouts are slightly different cabin to cabin, but they all feature pull-down beds and plenty of storage. The cabins have no bathrooms or kitchens, which is rather a shame. There is a bathhouse nearby that the guests can use though.

They have started building seven more such cabins, while they have also already hired a local architecture firm to design a new staff lodge for the school. This building will have bathrooms, a laundry, a dining hall and communal space, and will offer those staying at the cabins all the necessary facilities. They plan to complete the project by 2018.